A 45-year-old activist, who had been protesting against irregularities in the implementation of the rural employment guarantee scheme, was gang raped near Mandai Khurd village in Muzaffarpur on the night of March 27, the day of Holi festival. The victim died the next day while she was being taken to a local hospital.

The victim had reportedly became an eyesore for the influential landlords who have allegedly “hijacked” the rural employment scheme in the village using fake job cards. The activist (name withheld) was popular for her protests against the liquor mafia. The gang rape took place in a corn field when the victim was returning with her husband after meeting relatives.

Her husband was tied to a tree while she was forcibly carried away to a nearby field. The rapists reportedly tormented the victim for nearly half an hour. The victim’s husband was later untied by the assailants and threatened with dire consequences if he approached the police.

Enraged by the gang rape and subsequent death of the victim, villagers blocked the highway for nearly four hours. Rinku Devi, district secretary of Akhil Bharatiya Janwadi Mahila Samiti, alleged that activists protesting peacefully against the incident were beaten by goons and that three female activists were injured in the protest on March 28.

“The tormentors stuffed bamboo and pebbles in the private parts of the victim. There were deep teeth bite marks on her entire body,” Rinku said.

Villagers are also suspecting the role of police in the entire incident. Villagers claimed that police is not taking action to nab the criminals. They also blamed police for focusing on maintaining law and order in the village instead of arresting those who committed the crime.

Police claim that family members of the rape victim did not report the incident to the local police station. News about the incident reached district police headquarters after protesters blocked the road. “We have constituted raiding teams to nab the culprits. Police would have been able to act swiftly if the victim family had lodged an FIR,” Arvind Kumar Gupta, additional superintendent of police, Muzaffarpur, said.

There is also a widespread rumour that the post mortem report of the victim has been doctored. Protesting villagers said that police are refusing to give a copy of the autopsy report. “Our sources have informed that post mortem report says that victim was not raped,” villagers said.

There was no arrest till the time of filing of the report. Keeping in the view the tension reigning the village, a contingent of police have been deployed.

My elder sister in law was the one who suggested that I should go for female sterilization, if I get lucky I may win a motor cycle in the lottery…..

The Ration Unit and Fair Price Shops in Bundi District of Rajasthan have been given instructions by the State Health Department to meet the target of at least two sterilizations before 30th March. There is also an incentive attached. The dealer s with the maximum cases will be certified and rewarded. Targets are distributed further to the fair price dealers because the health department workers could not meet their family planning targets, which focus heavily on sterilization….. (Source: local newspaper, Rajasthan Patrika, 22.03.2013).

In a family planning camp held in a Community Health Centre (CHC) in Raipur Block of Pali district of Rajasthan on 22.03.2013, though the district collector announced various prizes including motorcycles, Colour TVs and home appliances to be distributed to ‘lottery winners’ among couples who opted for permanent sterilization as well as targets of village health providers to motivate women for sterilization; this camp did not see much of a turnover. The service providers shared that this could be because of Holi (a festival of colours in India) and during Holi people in the villages were busy.

Women present in the camp at Raipur were going under the knife without fully understanding the risks, precautions, consequences and their rights as claimants in case of failures, as nothing was explained o them or read out to them from the consent forms on which they gave their thumb impressions.

There are national guidelines of the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare that have a detailed description of the contents of medical history, Personal characteristics and reproductive history, menstrual history, obstetrics history, contraceptive history that is to be recorded in detail before female sterilization is done, however, this has not yet been built into the MIS system of the facilities. The only records that were maintained were the social-demographic profile and the consent form of the acceptors.

Follow up instructions, discharge cards, monitory incentive to sterilization acceptors were not given to the women before they left the facility. The families of women arranged their own transport to get back homes after the camp concluded at 3:00 pm on 22.03.2013.

Family planning should be regarded as a matter of choice and rights by both the service providers and the community. But this is not at all the case of what is being recorded and reported. While the National Population Policy has seen no place for targets, rural women continue to be seen as family planning targets and family planning camps as best models to meet these targets. This approach is problematic as there is no equal precedence given to post operative care and follow-up.

The government must audit and ensure strict compliance to the quality assurance mechanisms that have been established. There is an urgent need to understand both population issues and health service delivery within in the perspective of ‘women’s rights’ and justice, by the service provide

ROHTAK: Schedule Caste(SC) families were stoppped from performing Holi pooja and assaulted allegedly by the members of upper caste at Jahangirpur village of Jhajjar district of Haryana. Police have started investigation into the matter but no case was registered in this regard even after two days of the incident.

The SC families have threatened to leave the village if the accused are not arrested by the police after registering a criminal case against them. A sizable number of people of Schedule Caste today met Jhajjar district police chief, Anil Dhawan, at his office and demanded registration of criminal case against the accused, alleging that they had been living in a state of trauma since the incident while the accused were roaming openly in the village.

They also urged deployment of sufficient number of police personnel at the village to avoid any untoward incident. While interacting with mediapersons here, Brahma Nand, a man belonging to SC, said they had been performing Holi pooja separately from the upper caste for several years to avoid any untoward incident during the festival. However, “the people of the upper caste not only misbehaved with women of our families by using derogatory languages but also prevented them from performing Holi pooja on Tuesday. The women and children were also manhandled when they resisted the act,” alleged Brahma Nand. Poonam, a woman, said they would have to leave the village if action was not taken against the accused in this regard.

The police authorities should ensure the safety and security of the SC families in the village, she added.

Anil Dhawan told that the case was being probed as people of upper caste also suffered injuries in the clash.

They had also met him and demanded a fair investigation into the matter.

“Statements of people of both the parties are being recorded to ascertain the facts. No one found guilty in the probe will be spared,” said the SP, adding the case would be registered after the preliminary investigation. He said police personnel were sent to the village immediately after getting the information about violence between the groups.

Last year, JTSA compiled and released a report documenting 16 cases where the Delhi Police, especially its Special Cell, had framed innocents as terrorists. An overwhelming number of these unfortunate men were from Kashmir. Despite the fact that we cited court judgements which reprimanded the Cell for refusing to join independent witnesses, for willfully violating established procedures, for illegally detaining accused and showing their arrests on later dates; for fabricating evidence and failing to provide an iota of evidence in support of their charges – neither the leadership of the Delhi police nor the Home Ministry felt the need for any enquiry.

Many of these prize catches of the Special Cell happened to be either police or IB informers, surrendered militants, or men with whom one agency or the other had a score to settle. To that extent, Special Cell’s latest, sensational Holi gift – of having foiled a major terror attack in the capital city by Hizbul Mujahideen – follows the set narrative. What the Special Cell did not bargain for was the contestation of their great feat by the J and K police, who clearly said that Liaqat Shah was a former militant who was returning to Kashmir as part of the state government’s rehabilitation policy for surrendered militants. So, to its utter surprise, the Special Cell was not greeted by instant glory, but by an unusual bad press.

But again, predictably, the MHA has rushed to the defence of the pampered Special Cell. It is this continuing impunity which has emboldened agencies to pick, detain, arrest and charge people with terrorism. Three of the four officers of the Special Cell in the current ‘Hizb operation’ feature rather prominently in the JTSA report: DCP Sanjeev Yadav was key player in five of the 16 cases in Framed, Damned, Acquitted; Sanjay Dutt in six and Rahul Kumar in seven. It should be recalled also that DCP Sanjeev Yadav was indicted by the NHRC for masterminding the fake encounter at Sonia Vihar in 2006 (when he was an ACP). We demand that the magisterial enquiry into the encounter conducted by the then Divisional Commissioner, Shri Vijay Dev, be made public immediately. We fear that there is a concerted attempt to suppress the report of the magisterial enquiry.

Till this impunity ends, we shall continue to witness these press conferences, the display of seized arms and explosives, the conferring of medals and gallantry awards, and the manufacturing of fidayeens.

“A person who calls himself a saint, does he not have basic common sense? How can he waste water like this when millions are thirsting for even a drop?” said ANS state president Narendra Dabholkar.

Asaram Bapu was in Nagpur in the afternoon and met his followers at the Kasturchand Park grounds. He and his followers played a colourful, wet Holi with th help of water tankers brought from the Nagpur Municipal Corporation.

Though the amount of water used in the celebrations was not clear, residents told mediapersons that lakhs of litres was literally wasted.

ANS activists staged a black-flag demonstration, raised slogans outside the venue and urged the civic agency not to provide them with water.

Six activists of the Jharkhand statehood movement, who were sent to jail on Saturday by a Railway Magistrate in a 1991 case, were on Monday bailed out from the Chaibasa jail. Xavier Dias, John Barjo, Basudev Devgum, Moso Munda, Rajaram Tanti and Indu Lagur were released at 6.30 pm. Three of the nine accused in the case have died.

They were sent to jail despite a pardon granted by the state government in all cases originating out of the successful movement to carve out Jharkhand from Bihar.

State Home Secretary J B Tubid said this was because this particular case was out of the purview of the state government. “The (Union) Railway Ministry has to take a call in this. We had written to them a long time ago, asking for special consideration in cases relating to Jharkhand movement activists. There must be 20-25 such cases. There has been no response,” he said.

The case relates to a protest that was organised on March 15, 1991. Some workers of the Tata Iron and Steel Company had allegedly invaded upon the privacy of tribal women while celebrating Holi. “According to Ho tradition unless the village head priest Duri performs the Baa puja villagers under his jurisdiction cannot participate in similar festivals elsewhere. It’s a sacrilege,” wrote Xavier Dias in a widely-circulated note drafted before his arrest.

The accused, then members of the All Jharkhand Students’ Union, organised the tribals of the area for the protest. According to the complaint by the Chief Security Officer of the TISCO’s Noamundi plant, which formed the basis of the FIR, the protesters “snatched the keys from the sepoy”, pushed him and “removed the fish-plates” of the railway track used for transportation.

All accused have been on bail since 1991. Meanwhile, three accused — Kandey Laguri, John Tiria and Jeno Chatar — passed away.

The arrests took place as the accused had not been attending court proceedings for over a year. In response, the court cancelled their bail bonds and sent notices warning attachment of property, forcing the six to surrender before it.

A note sent by Xavier Dias, before they surrendered, to let the world know the details of the case

and the story of the battle of the people of Noamundi against the TISCO…TISCO (Tata Iron & Steel Co.) presently know as TATA STEEL’s captive iron ore mine lies in Noamundi Jharkhand (India). It is one of their first mines operational since 1907 and supplying ore to its furnace in Jamshedpur. This is the homeland of the Adivasi people of India from whom resources were expropriated to convert the House of Tata’s from a opium trader to a full-fledged monopoly capitalist. One of the first in British India.

Noamundi prior to the arrival of mining was a 100% ‘Ho’ Adivasi territory. Today Tatas have a large township with massive mechanised mining including processing plants.

In 1991 on the festival of Holi (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holi) a rowdy group of TISCO employees molested a team of Adivasi women labourers on the construction site of the Companies Sports Stadium. The women had joined their hands and told these drunken workers that as their Baa Parob (festival of spring) was not yet performed in their village they cannot join them in the Holi celebrations. According to Ho tradition unless the village head priest Duri performs the Baa puja villagers under his jurisdiction cannot participate in similar festivals elsewhere. It’s a sacrilege. The TISCO workers forced themselves on the women and by applying colour on their breast and genitals molested them.

They all came from Noamundi Basti the original village from where Noamundi gets its name. When the late Gagan Suren, the Munda (Adivasi village chief), of the village came to know of it, he approached the TISCO management and demanded that a case be registered against the workers. TISCO refused and as the Police too come under their control, the Police station refused to accept the FIR (First Information Report) of the Munda.

One of the sub colonies of Noamundi Township, JoJo Hatting comes under the jurisdiction of the Mundi of Noamundi Basti in this case Gagan Suren. Under the power the Munda had then he ask all the workers and their families to quit Jojo Hatting. TISCO found itself saddled with about a hundred refugee families at their door step. TISCO soon relented and asked the Police to file a case. Immediately the TISCO sponsored union affiliated to the central trade union of the Congress Party (INTUC) threatened that if a case is filed, they would go on strike. It should be noted here that this was the first time in the history of this union that they gave such an ultimatum to the management.

In the meanwhile, anger spread among the Ho people. At that time the All Jharkhand Student Union (AJSU) was strong in that area. AJSU supported the demands of the Munda.

On the other side of Noamundi in a different area lies the TISCO Palletising Plant or P Plant as known locally. It was constructed on grabbed lands of the surrounding villages, the main one being Moodhi village. The sacred graves and sacred groves till today rest within the walls of the P Plant and ever since the villagers have been demanding compensation. Seeing their relatives of Noamundi basti under attack and agitating, the villagers of Moodhi village decided to support them by opening another agitation front against TISCO. They locked the P Plant with the workers in and refused entry to the next shift of workers. Hundreds surrounded the P Plant and kept its gates locked for days.

TISCO was hereby being challenged by Adivasis who they consider as sheep to be slaughtered. They could not take it. Their security men (private security force) opened fire on the Adivasis at the P Plant. This act itself let to a big problem for TISCO as they cannot open fire on a crowd. So they got the Police to issue a statement that it was the Police who fired the shots.

As usual in those times the Police issued different criminal cases against the villagers and AJSU activist. As the P Plant gate is adjacent to the railway line TISCO got the Railways to file their case against the same accused.

This group of accused, about fifteen in number, is today reduced to seven persons. The rest all have died much before their time. They are today the unsung heroes of Jharkhand. Their wives and children are till date suffering due to the sacrifice of their breadwinners.

Since 1991, all the accused activists have been on bail (after surrendering and going to jail then!) and they have been attending all court dates for the last two decades.

In 2010 the lawyer handling the case gives up practice to join the Abhijeet Steel Company. He abandoned the case without handing it over to another lawyer. As a result the court has issued an arrest warrant against all the surviving activists. As we were not informed of this warrant, the court converted it into a ‘Kudkhi’ warrant or seizure of properties of the accused.

I am writing this note a day before we all surrender before the Magistrate. In accordance with fair judicial procedure, he should revive our bail. But we are apprehending that he will send us all into judicial custody or jail in order to harass us and threaten the ongoing agitation against the TATA STEEL expansion of their mines in Noamundi. This is the best way the Jharkhand state can appease Tatas at this stage. In the past we have experienced that such repression only goes to strengthen our resolve and movement. Thanks to TATA STEEL

Written by Xavier Dias on 22nd November 2012(along with the surviving accused including: John Barjo, Basudev Devgum, Moso Munda, Rajaram Tanti and Indu Laguri)